UPDF: Kony and LRA have been neutralised

FILE PHOTO A picture taken on November 12, 2006 shows the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), Joseph Kony, answering journalists’ questions in Ri-Kwamba, southern Sudan. AFP PHOTO

Ugandan army says LRA ‘neutralised’, begins withdrawal

Kampala, Uganda | AFP | The Ugandan army said Wednesday it has neutralised the Lord’s Resistance Army, as troops began withdrawing from the Central African Republic where they had been hunting the group’s feared leader Joseph Kony.

“The decision to withdraw was premised on the realisation that the mission to neutralise the LRA has now been successfully achieved,” Ugandan army spokesman Brigadier Richard Karemire said in a statement.

The army said that Kony now commands fewer than 100 fighters and has been left “weak and ineffective.”

Ugandan troops have operated in the strife-torn eastern part of CAR since 2009 searching for LRA fighters terrorising the area.

“The Ugandan military operation, with the assistance of US military advisors, has played an important role in degrading the LRA, especially in encouraging defections of LRA members,” said Washington-based researcher Ledio Cakaj, author of “When the Walking Defeats You”, a book about Kony’s inner circle.

However, Cakaj said that while Kony is still at large the threat to the local civilian population remains.

“Local security forces in CAR have shown in the past their inability to provide security for civilians, and the vacuum left by the withdrawal will likely be exploited by the LRA and other predatory groups”, he told AFP.

At the end of March the US military announced that its forces, which have been deployed in the hunt for Kony in eastern CAR since 2011, would be removed from counter-LRA activities in the impoverished nation.